Material-cosmic plasticity and other new materialist mantras: on some ontological aporias of New Materialism
Résumé
The theoretical movement known as New Materialism, which emerged in the early 2000s, saw not only the return of ontology, but also the affirmation of a materialism in which all oppositions and contradictions would dissolve. New Materialist trends take the agency of non-humans, as suggested by Haraway and Latour in particular, a step further, and come to regard all the material components of our societies as active agents endowed, to varying degrees, with a form of vitality. This is a version of the older fascination with the concept of plasticity, now applied to matter and indeed the cosmos itself. (Traditional terms like 'animism' and 'vitalism' are of limited use here as they seem to confuse the issue further without adding precision.) In this lecture I want us to look at what I call the 'ontologism' of New Materialism in relation to vital, mechanistic and dialectical forms of materialism, commenting on authors such as Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, and Elizabeth Grosz.